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There is no single monthly electricity bill for a Raspberry Pi 5 streaming to YouTube around the clock: it depends on the setup’s average power draw at the wall and your electricity tariff. For a 30-day month, every continuous watt uses 0.72 kWh. At an illustrative average of 5 W, that is 3.6 kWh; at 10 W, it is 7.2 kWh. Multiply the relevant energy use by your local per-kWh rate to estimate the electricity charge.
Calculate the monthly electricity cost
Use average watts for the complete running setup, rather than the power supply’s rated capacity:
monthly cost = average watts Ă· 1,000 Ă— hours streamed Ă— local price per kWh
A 30-day month has 720 hours. The following are example loads for continuous operation, not measured results for a Raspberry Pi 5 running a particular FFmpeg command:
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| Illustrative average wall draw | Energy in a 30-day month | Electricity cost |
|---|---|---|
| 5 W | 3.6 kWh | 3.6 Ă— your local price per kWh |
| 10 W | 7.2 kWh | 7.2 Ă— your local price per kWh |
For a 365-day year, a continuous 5 W load uses 43.8 kWh, while a continuous 10 W load uses 87.6 kWh. To turn those figures into money, use the marginal energy rate on your own bill. Fixed charges, taxes and any internet-plan charges are separate; without your location and tariff, a universal currency estimate would be misleading.
Measure the complete streaming setup
Take a wall-power reading while streaming
- Connect the Pi 5 and the equipment it actually uses—power supply, fan or cooler, storage and other attached devices—to a plug-in energy monitor.
- Run the FFmpeg stream as you normally would and record the monitor’s average power over a representative period. A longer reading is more useful if encoding load or fan activity varies.
- Convert average watts to energy: multiply watts by operating hours, then divide by 1,000 to get kWh.
- Multiply the kWh by the marginal per-kWh rate on your electricity bill.
Measuring at the wall accounts for the whole setup, including power-supply conversion losses and peripherals. A bare-board figure or a short peak reading cannot tell you the actual average draw of your assembled stream.
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What Raspberry Pi’s published figures do—and do not—mean
Raspberry Pi recommends a 27 W USB-C supply for the Pi 5, but that is the supply’s capacity, not a claim that the board continuously consumes 27 W. Raspberry Pi’s hardware documentation lists 800 mA as typical bare-board active current and notes that consumption depends on attached peripherals. It also says a 3 A supply limits downstream USB current to 600 mA. These specifications are useful for planning power delivery, but they do not establish the wall draw of a particular FFmpeg stream. Raspberry Pi hardware documentation.
Raspberry Pi’s 2023 launch article says peak consumption can reach around 12 W under intensive, pathological workloads. That describes an extreme peak, not an expected average for a 24/7 stream. The article also discusses the optional Active Cooler for uncased use under continuous heavy load; cooling is a workload and setup decision, not a guaranteed electricity-saving measure. Raspberry Pi 5 launch article.
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Keep streaming settings and internet costs in perspective
Resolution, frame rate and bitrate affect the upload capacity and data transfer your stream needs, but they do not directly determine the electricity bill. YouTube’s encoder guidance recommends RTMP or RTMPS, constant bitrate, and a two-second keyframe interval. For 30 fps video, it gives a recommended video bitrate range of 2–6 Mbps at 720p and 4–10 Mbps at 1080p. These are YouTube recommendations, not measurements of Pi 5 power use. YouTube live encoder settings.
Check that your sustained upload capacity can support the selected stream settings, and review your ISP plan separately for data caps or overage charges. The amount and cost of transferred data depend on the stream and your provider’s terms; they are not included in an electricity calculation.
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Other costs and operating decisions
- Electricity: estimate it from measured average wall watts and your marginal energy rate.
- Internet: check your own plan for limits or charges; no ISP plan or data price is established here.
- Power supply and cooling: choose equipment for the Pi and workload. Do not assume that a higher-rated supply draws its full rated power, or that adding a cooler reduces electricity use.
- Uptime: a 24/7 stream means the equipment is operating continuously; your actual monthly total changes if it is offline for part of the month.
Or let it run in the cloud
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Quick Recap
Best Value
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Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
